Naperville Church Gives Up On Own Sewage System

October 01, 1991|By Hal Dardick.

A Naperville church has abandoned plans to build a self-contained sewer system that turns human waste into fertilizer after the Aurora Sanitary District refused to alter its opposition to the proposal.

Giving up a three-year fight, Calvary Temple officials last week decided instead to seek annexation to the district, which opposed the self-contained approach, said District Manager Thomas Muth.

``Calvary Temple has abandoned the land-treatment system which Sheaffer & Roland Inc. designed,`` he said. ``Instead, they have approached the Aurora Sanitary District to discuss annexation.``

Jack Sheaffer, a hydrologist whose firm designed the self-contained system, decried the abandonment of the project.

``Instead of putting it (treated sewage) on the land to make crops grow, they`re going to put it in the Fox River to make algae grow,`` he said. ``I`d say it`s a dark day for water quality in Illinois. . . . This is a setback for people who would like to see a clean Fox River.``

He said Calvary Temple abandoned the project because it needed to start building immediately on its new site in Naperville.

The temple sought to build the system so its missionaries could study it and help Third World countries develop similar ones. Sheaffer & Roland, which built the first such system 20 years ago in Muskegan, Mich., currently is building similar ones at two sites in Kane County, one in Lake County, two in Pennsylvania and three in Poland.

The company also contended that building the system would be less expensive than hooking up to existing sewer lines. The annexation fee of $750 an acre could cost Calvary Temple $82,500 for its 110 acre site on Illinois Highway 59, between Montgomery Road and 75th Street.

Calvary also will have to bear the cost of extending sewer lines to its location, Muth said. The temple has asked for a reduction in fees, and the district Board of Trustees is expected to decide on that issue by Oct. 23.

The Sheaffer & Roland system would have used aerated lagoons to turn human waste into fertilizer. But the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency denied an application for the system, citing objections from the Sanitary District and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.

The Sanitary District contended that the system has risks, including foul smells and the possible contamination of the area`s groundwater supply. District officials also said the existing sanitary system was designed to service the Calvary site, and not doing so would throw its planning into disarray.

But Sheaffer & Roland said the system, the same as one used at the Hamiltion Lakes development in Itasca since 1980, posed no such risks. John R. Sheaffer II, Sheaffer & Roland`s attorney, said the Sanitary District opposed the system because it could become more popular than conventional systems, threatening the existence of sanitary districts.

Sanitary districts treat wastewater to reduce the amount of raw sewage to levels deemed acceptable by the federal EPA, and then discharge them into waterways. In the case of the Aurora Sanitary District, wastewater is treated and then dumped into the Fox River.